Veteran documentary-maker Steve James (Hoop Dreams) is back with an engrossing story: the extraordinary fiasco of the Abacus bank prosecution. It is a tale of hypocrisy, judicial bullying and racism. Abacus was a small neighbourhood bank serving New York’s Chinese community, which discovered a crooked employee falsifying mortgage documents, duly reported the matter to the authorities, but then found itself prosecuted by a district attorney who had sniffed a post-2008 PR opportunity to collar some real live bankers.

It was the first and only federal bank prosecution since BCCI in 1991. Big guns such as Goldman Sachs need only get a fine and a butterfly-wingbeat slap on the wrist. But the DA was mentally measuring up this Chinese mom-and-pop firm for uniforms with little arrows. The court authorities even staged a grotesque “chain-gang” court appearance for the bank’s staff, in handcuffs and connected elbow restraints, shuffling miserably along, hiding their faces from the flashbulbs – unthinkable for black people and, of course, never considered for white people.

Perhaps the truly incredible thing is that Chanterelle Sung, an employee of the DA’s office, is daughter of the Abacus bank’s founder, Thomas Sung, and had to withdraw from the case. James speaks to all the major players, including DA Cyrus Vance, who has the good grace to look embarrassed. Yet again, it is a story of the fat cats and the thin cats – and a reminder of how Milton Friedman’s maxim applies to the bank bailouts: socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.